Pritam Singh responds to Lawrence Wong on Israel-Hamas conflict

The Workers’ Party (WP) will append the Parliamentary speeches by the Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh and MP Gerald Giam to its Oct 18 statement on the Israel-Hamas war, which should make its position on the Hamas attack quite clear. Mr Singh said this in the House on Monday (Nov 6), in response to a request by Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong to update the statement to remove “ambiguity”. Mr Singh also said Mr Wong had called this a national security matter and that the Government had felt “there were some omissions which were quite critical”. He said the Government “did not take (WP) into confidence on its position” and there had been no message from the Foreign Affairs Minister or anyone else in Government to that effect. Mr Singh asked the Government to let WP know in future if it has concerns about national security matters which the opposition “might not be apprised of or (we may) have completely ignored”, and gave the assurance that WP would take those views on board very carefully. Mr Wong responded that he “fully (took) on board” the points raised by Mr Singh. He said the Government has from time to time, when there are national security concerns, taken WP into confidence and it will continue to do so.